What can we learn from this?

What can we learn from this?

Hear me out:

I made about three mistakes before I finished my first cup of coffee. Five mistakes before my second cup, and the act of actually drinking the second cup was mistake six.

I fucked up at least seven evolutions before lunch, and I failed about a dozen times by my evening commute. It’s likely I’ll dick-up a few more times before I get to the sheets tonight…possibly four or five times while I’m actually asleep. If I wake up on the floor, I’ll update you.

I’m fairly certain I’m failing as I write this. The other dozen drafts I have in the queue are trash.

Each day is a day of epic failures…

but I’m failing so much better than I failed yesterday, and I’m light years ahead of last week.

With each failure is a question:

What can we learn from this?

And with each answer comes more failure, but improved failure.

We have this odd preoccupation with winning, especially in America, that makes us so averse to any types of failure. Failure avoidance is a curse. It leads to all sorts of maladaptive behaviors:

Hell, some people simply won’t engage in something if they don’t think they can’t be immediately successful. Yeah, that’s me.

I wasted about half of my life doing that.

What can we learn from this?

It’s easy to get caught up in the social media whirlwind and alternate reality, where everyone tries to pass off their weekly highlight reel as if those are the only moments that they have. As if everything is perfect and happy and wonderful. Like nothing ever goes awry.

Fuck outta here.

Let me tell you something, cochise…

If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t learning. Go grab yourself a motor learning expert and ask them how we learn. Hint: it’s through failure. The problem is that we are so afraid to look bad for the camera that we lost our minds seeking perfection. We stopped learning. We stopped moving forward.

We stagnated and fell victim to inertia.

We…as in “me too”. I did that. I was that guy.

You want to talk about failure? The only failure that I found is in failing to fail. Yeah, go ahead and wrap your head around that.

What can we learn from this?

We can learn to keep failing and keep learning.

We can learn to wake up the next day striving for perfection, but expecting that we will, like normal humans, fail.

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Jonny is currently the Director of Clinical Services at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York City He is a Licensed Massage Therapist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist, and Mindset Coach. As a Former Navy Chief Petty Officer, he combines an education in Performance Psychology with extensive military and corporate leadership experience to offer you a one-stop shop to optimizing all facets of your mindset, health, and well-being. Learn More about About Jonny Pietrunti